EQ, known as Emotional Intelligence can play a big role in your success at work and your time away from work. CEOs need EQ more than ever. Today, it’s routine for CEOs to manage rapidly changing technology, outside economic forces, restrictive regulations, a more mobile staff, diverse workforces, locations, and skill sets. Of course, CEOs are not the only people with busy lives, it’s the norm for everyone.

We all experience stress from the demands on our time. The demands from our boss on projects we need to complete yesterday! The demands from our families not only add stress, but sometimes guilt. I should call Aunt Martha, I could have visited cousin Fred while he was in the hospital, and poor second cousin twice removed, Mary living all alone. Of course, Mary probably likes it that way, but you still store the guilt, just in case. During the holidays, demands are compounded due to increasing our social activities, trying to meet year-end deadlines, getting projects ready for launch for the new year, and people who expect to be included in our scope of attention. If ever we need to call on our EQ, it’s during the holidays.

Unless you’ve been living on another planet, you know a little something about Emotional Intelligence (EI). Therefore, you no doubt know that EI is important in the workforce and why, that everyone has emotions, how to recognize them in others, and that we, as humans, have certain emotions built in or “hard wired” into us. However, other ideas are now coming to the forefront about these built in emotions.

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, gives us a set of EI Competencies. They are:

Self-Awareness

Self-Management

Social Awareness

Social Skills

Importance of EI at Work: One source suggests that self-awareness forms the foundation of the other factors. An example is someone who is a bully, or obnoxious, or argumentative, and they are unaware of their behavior. Therefore, none of the other factors will become tools that individual incorporates into his/her coping skills. The behavior will not change, and the office workforce will continue to experience disruption resulting in low morale and poor performance. If the leader is the individual with these types of behaviors and is unaware, crisis can ensue. EI at work remains important. Other ideas have a new spin.

Emotional intelligence is the foundation of sound decision making, which is at the core of consistently high performance. Studies on the impact of emotional intelligence in the workplace emphasize that organizations with higher levels of emotional intelligence reap benefits in productivity and success. Business leaders who use Emotional Quotient expertise to build an emotionally intelligent culture gain a competitive edge for their organization in the marketplace.